New Iranian Leaders Show Willingness to Negotiate After Khamenei’s Death
The U.S. and Israel launched extensive airstrikes across Iran on Sunday, targeting ballistic missile sites and destroying warships as part of an escalating military campaign following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A senior White House official stated on Sunday that Iran’s “new potential leadership” has indicated a willingness to engage in talks with the United States. This announcement follows a significant military operation by American and Israeli forces, which resulted in the deaths of Iran’s supreme leader and several high-ranking officials, according to Fox News.
The official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal administration matters, mentioned that President Donald Trump is “eventually” open to negotiations, but for the time being, the military operation “continues unabated.” The official did not specify who the potential new leaders of Iran are or how they expressed their willingness to negotiate.
Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said, declining comment on the timing.
Senator Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to provide specific details on CBS’s “Face the Nation” regarding intelligence sharing with Israel. However, he emphasized that monitoring the movements of the supreme leader and other leaders of adversarial nations is clearly “one of the highest priorities for our intelligence community.”
“Clearly, this operation is driven by intelligence collected by Israel and the United States that has once again proven that our nations have capabilities that no other nation on Earth has,” said Cotton, R-Ark
Meanwhile, explosions were powerful enough to rattle windows throughout the country, sending plumes of smoke high into the sky over Tehran. Iranian officials report that over 200 people have died since the strikes began, reports said on Monday.
As the bombardment continued, the conflict expanded beyond just the U.S., Israel, and Iran. Iran-supported militant groups in Iraq and Lebanon began launching attacks on Israel and a U.S. military base. Gulf states issued warnings that they might retaliate against Iran after the strikes, which targeted key installations and resulted in the deaths of at least five civilians.
Additionally, after Britain announced that it would allow the U.S. to utilize its bases in the war effort, a drone attack was reported to have targeted a British base in Cyprus.
Iran initially promised to retaliate and did so by lobbing missiles at Israel and Arab states in a counteroffensive that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. service members, marking the first known American casualties in the conflict. Israeli rescue services reported that strikes targeted several locations, including Jerusalem and a synagogue in Beit Shemesh, where nine people were killed and 28 were wounded, raising the overall death toll in the country to 11.
The attacks on Iran showed no signs of fading, as the U.S. and Israel focused their efforts on targeting warships and ballistic missile sites.
Three of the military members who were killed were U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Kuwait as part of a logistics unit.
The U.S. military said B-2 stealth bombers struck Iran’s ballistic missile facilities with 2,000-pound bombs. Trump said on social media that nine Iranian warships had been sunk and that the Iranian navy’s headquarters had been “largely destroyed.”
“I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important. We are going after the rest — They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also! In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters,” he wrote.
Others have mostly stayed out of the war and pressed for diplomacy. But in an indication the conflict could draw in other nations, Britain, France and Germany said Sunday they were ready to work with the U.S. to help stop Iran’s attacks, and a group of Gulf Arab countries said it reserved the right to respond to Iranian strikes, reports said.
Obama Accuses JD Vance Of Promoting ‘Blood And Soil’ Politics
Former President Barack Obama rarely mentions Vice President JD Vance by name, but that changed this week with one of his sharpest public attacks since Vance took office.
The comments immediately fueled speculation that Democrats are beginning to focus more attention on the vice president as Republicans look ahead to the post-Trump era.
Speaking Thursday during a conversation with author Malcolm Gladwell, Obama accused Vance of promoting what he described as a “blood and soil” vision of America, despite being married to Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Obama made the remarks while discussing the Reconstruction era and arguing that many of the same debates over citizenship, voting rights and national identity continue today.
“We have a politics now that at least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘We the people’ means a certain kind of people,” Obama said.
“When you have the vice president, current vice president, making a speech that is basically a blood and soil version of ‘We the people,’ that it matters who your parents were and how long they’ve been here despite him being married to a daughter of an immigrant himself.”
The phrase “blood and soil” is historically associated with Nazi Germany and white nationalist ideology.
Obama went on to argue that debates over who belongs in America remain central to the nation’s politics.
“That echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions,” he said.
Gladwell followed by accusing Vance of hypocrisy, arguing that the vice president was making what he called a nativist argument despite his own family’s immigrant background.
Obama agreed.
“That is progress,” Obama said.
“Listen, hypocrisy is progress. It is, because it means that you feel guilty enough to either lie to yourself or others.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Vance’s office for comment.
Obama did not identify the specific speech he was criticizing, but Vance’s most recent nationally televised remarks came during Independence Day celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday.
In that speech, Vance encouraged Americans to reject what he called a “two-dimensional view” of the country focused only on its historical failures.
“So what I’d ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday, is to reject the two-dimensional view of your fellow citizens and reject the two-dimensional view of your country,” Vance said.
“Reject the view of your nation that sees only its sins, but not its grace and its greatness.”
He also emphasized that America’s accomplishments were achieved by “a common people working towards a common future.”
Obama has generally avoided making Vance a regular target since the vice president took office.
One notable exception came during the 2024 presidential campaign when then-Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
Without naming Vance directly, Obama contrasted Harris’ choice with the Republican ticket.
“When a presidential candidate chooses a running mate, it says a lot about who they are and what kind of president they’ll be,” Obama said at the time, Fox News reported.
Political observers have increasingly discussed Vance as a potential frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, though he has not announced any plans to run.
Against that backdrop, Obama’s unusually direct criticism is likely to fuel speculation that some Democrats are beginning to sharpen their message against a politician they view as a likely future standard-bearer for the Republican Party. While no Democratic leaders have publicly described their strategy in those terms, prominent figures often begin drawing contrasts with potential future rivals well before a presidential campaign officially begins.
Whether that proves to be the case remains to be seen, but Obama’s remarks marked one of his most pointed critiques of Vance to date and ensured the vice president once again found himself at the center of the national political conversation.
